Defintiely looks like a street car to us. Since the Camaro runs the quarter-mile in 8 seconds, that makes it a badass street car.

Ask any car enthusiast to narrow down their choice for his or her favorite car, and you’ll likely not get an easy answer. Most classic car fans are not able to choose just one make or model as their favorite, but Rick Vernon counts the ’69 Camaro as one of his choices. He told us, “I’ve always liked the ‘69 Z28.”

It drinks pump gas, and propels this first-gen to 9-second quarter-mile times – mid-8s if Rick feeds it the juice.

Rick says that he found this car in 2008, in the Volunteer state. He also said, “When I got the car, it had a 427 big-block and a Turbo 400 transmission.” Unfortunately, after roughly a month of enjoyment, Rick got to experience the not so fun situation of a lifter coming apart in the engine. This did however present the perfect time to build an engine exactly how he wanted.

He reached out to KTR Racing Engines in Buffalo, New York, and had then build the ailing big-block into a 512 cubic-inch monster. With that engine built and installed, it didn’t take long for Rick to learn that the transmission was not up to the task when it developed an attitude and stop shifting. This forced him to rebuild another part of the car, but then he had a truly reliable classic musclecar.

But, like most car enthusiasts, being satisfied usually doesn’t last very long, and as Rick tells us, “After a few years, I wanted to go faster. So, I had KTR built a 558 cubic-inch engine using a Merlin block, 355 Dart CNC-ported aluminum heads, and a 1050 cfm Holley Dominator carb that has been tweaked by CFM Performance Carburetors in Ohio.” Giving this monster of a Camaro a little boost in power is two stages of nitrous oxide. When that was done, Mike from Jancen Racing Engines dynoed the engine, resulting in 890 horsepower on pump gas.

The view that most Ford guys typically see.

Behind the Camaro’s engine is a very stout Turbo 400, which is connected to a four-link suspended Dana 60 rearend filled with 4.10 gears. Rick finished by saying, “The car has run 9.27 seconds in the quarter-mile without the nitrous, and 8.46 seconds with both stages. Not bad for a car that is also street driven.”

The cockpit of a blazingly-fast street car.

Do you want to read about more Home-Built Heroes? All you need to do is click here. If you own a Home-Built Hero, we want to hear about it. Since we’ve started the series, we have received more than a few candidates, but we still want to see more – we can never get enough. If you want to see more cars built by you the readers, send us a few pictures of your car showing the engine, interior, and exterior, along with all of the pertinent information, and we’ll make you Internet famous. You can send your submissions to [email protected].